Two days after their departure from Amande, Rio and Latifa finally
crossed the border to the eastern region of the Galarc Kingdom.
From this point on was the Wilderness, where their first challenge
immediately awaited them. The Nephilim Mountains were a mountain range
that divided the Wilderness from the region of Strahl in a single vertical line,
with a height ranging from 2000 meters to 5000 meters. Furthermore, more
mountains continued past the mountain range; a vast wasteland that was of no
benefit for the humans of Strahl to venture into. Thus the name: the
Wilderness.
To cross over the gate to that isolated land, Rio was sprinting at full
speed. Behind him was Latifa's small figure.
"How are you holding up?" Rio called out to Latifa, who was running
behind him. He stopped along the mountainside.
"I'm... all right," Latifa answered with a nod, but her breath was coming
out a bit roughly. Meanwhile, Rio's expression was still calm and
comfortably at ease.
"It's a little early, but let's set up camp for today. I'll get everything
ready, so you can rest. Make sure you rehydrate yourself," Rio said, marking
the end of their travel for the day. At that, an expression of fear appeared
across Latifa's face. She hurriedly bowed her head.
"I-I'm... sorry!"
"...Why are you apologizing?" Rio asked calmly.
"I'm... slowing you... down. Ah... W-Will you leave me... behind?"
Latifa asked, hanging her head.
The second half of her sentence was so quiet, it faded before it could
reach Rio's ears. But, he could pretty much guess what she had said from the
mood in the air.
"You're not being a burden at all. We're in the mountains right now — if
we rushed forward too hastily, we'd end up with altitude sickness. That's
why we're camping here now. It's out of necessity."
Rio scratched his head as he tried to explain everything with as gentle of a tone as possible. Hearing that, Latifa sighed with relief. Since making his
inference about Latifa's circumstances, Rio was doing his best to treat her as
kindly as possible, talking to her whenever he could. By doing that, he
figured he could clear away some of her anxieties and prompt her to
participate in more conversations, developing her language abilities.
However, Rio wasn't a psychologist, and he didn't really have a social
personality to begin with.
If anything, he was quite awkward when it came to relationships. That
was why he was mostly observing the situation for now, clumsy as he might
be.
I'll do the best I can... Hopefully things will work out.
He could only do his best with the situation, after all. With that thought,
Rio went about setting up the camp.
Later that night, their newest problem occurred shortly after the two of
them had settled down to sleep.
"Wah... wah... uwaaaah!"
Inside the pitch black tent they were sleeping in — small and simply
constructed to just cram the two of them in — Latifa suddenly burst into
tears. Rio's eyes shot open and he immediately looked towards Latifa, who
was laying down next to him. She was crying with her eyes closed beside
him. It was the night-time crying of an infant, so to speak. While it varied
from person to person, children who cried at night at Latifa's age were rare.
However, Rio couldn't figure out why she would be crying. She had been
fine the day before, after all.
"Hey, what's wrong? Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Rio asked her
helplessly through her incessant tears.
"Eek! No... Where am I?! Someone save me!" Latifa mumbled in her
sleep as tears continued to stream down her face.
"That's... Japanese..." The words that came forth from Latifa were of a
language extremely familiar to Rio — no, Amakawa Haruto. He was utterly
dumbfounded. However, Latifa's eyes remained shut.
"Was that... sleeptalking?"
Rio realized that the words had been involuntarily spoken. But for merely
talking while she was asleep, her words were a shocking revelation.
Latifa suddenly clutched the robe Rio was using as a blanket tightly,
pulling it closer to cling to him. She had quieted to just sniffling, now, but
still showed no sign of stopping her tears.
"What should I do..." Should he wake her up, or should he let her sleep
on like this? Not knowing what to do, Rio simply laid there, bewildered.
"Are you awake?" Rio gently tried to shake her.
"Mom... dad... brother," she murmured timidly in Japanese.
Rio furrowed his brow at the unbearable feeling within him. Was she
experiencing some kind of dream? He couldn't help but imagine what kind of
dream it could be.
Warm, gentle days. Living in happiness, every day. Maybe it was a
dream like that...
But that dream wouldn't last long. As though proving his theory, Latifa
teared up more and buried her face into Rio's chest.
Her small frame fit snugly against Rio's chest, and her white, porcelain-
like skin seemed so delicate; fragile enough to break with a single touch...
Rio wrapped an arm around Latifa's back and patted her gently, as
though handling a glass doll. At the same time, he carefully stroked her
beautiful, pale orange hair, untangling the knots. Her cute fox ears moved,
twitching happily as he did. For a while, Rio continued to soothe Latifa like
an older brother calming his crying sister.
"Nngh..."
Eventually, Latifa's breathing evened out in her sleep. Rio let out a sigh
of relief. She was still clinging to his robe, but he didn't see a need to
forcefully pull away from her, so he let it be.
Suddenly, Rio was overwhelmed by a surge of mental fatigue. They had
been running every single day, accumulating exhaustion until it manifested as
a sleepiness that gnawed away at his consciousness.
Rio slowly blinked his heavy eyelids shut and let the darkness of sleep
take his mind far away.
The next morning, when Latifa woke up, she found herself clinging onto
something warm and comforting.
She rubbed her cheek against it in her half-conscious daze, only coming
to her senses once she reluctantly drew her cheek away from it. After several
blinks, she realized what she had been clinging to, and froze in shock.
There before her was a boy with well-defined features — Rio. He was
breathing peacefully as he slept.
How, when, why had she been clinging to him? Incoherent questions
passed through her head one after another, causing Latifa to fall into a panic.
C-Come to think of it... I... was crying... That wasn't... a dream, was it...?
She took a deep breath in order to try to calm herself as she recalled the
events of last night, but she couldn't determine what had been a dream and
what had been reality.
However, she was certain that someone had held her and comforted her
with their warmth. Considering her situation right now, those events had
probably been reality.
Once Latifa had settled on that conclusion, an embarrassment hard to
express in words surged forward. Her heart thumped madly. She clutched
Rio's robe with both her hands and hesitantly fixed her gaze on Rio once
more.
"Fwah..."
Latifa's pale cheeks flushed red in an instant, and she accidentally let out
a befuddled sound.
"His hair... so black... He looks... like him? Like that older brother... like
an onii-chan..."
She tilted her head as she looked at him curiously.
"Ehehe. Onii-chan."
Latifa buried her face against Rio's chest once more, happily letting a
smile appear on her face. Her actions were like that of a small puppy
furiously seeking affection.
After taking in Rio's scent and feel for a while, Latifa slowly raised her
head to look up at him.
"Good morning. Sleep well?" Rio greeted her softly, looking back at her
with a somewhat troubled face.
"Fweh?! Ah, I... I'm sorry! Wah!" Latifa stuttered her apology, jumping
back in a panic and bumping her head against the low roof. Rio rubbed
Latifa's head gently.
"It's all right, I'm not mad. This place is cramped, so you need to be
careful. Are you hurt?"
"I-I'm... fine. Ehe. Eheheh." Latifa grinned in delight.
◇◇◇
Over two months passed since the night Latifa cried in her sleep.
Presently, Rio and Latifa had crossed the Nephilim Mountains and
passed through the huge wasteland beyond it, continuously making their way east. With no map, they had to fumble their way through, sometimes taking
detours and sometimes retreating backwards. But they were definitely
moving forward, little by little.
"Rio! Excuse me, but I can smell something strange! It smells like a
beast's blood!" As the two of them were running across a plateau, Latifa
called out. She had lost a lot of her stuttering speech by conversing with Rio
in the last two months.
Rio, who was running in front, threw up a hand sign and stopped.
As a werefox, Latifa's sense of smell was leagues above Rio's, even
when he enhanced his senses through his physical body enchantment. Her
nose was able to identify any scent and process the information accurately.
That was why Rio placed his trust in Latifa's sense of smell, requesting that
she let him know whenever she smelled something suspicious.
However, yelling it out loudly wasn't the best idea.
"A beast's blood... There might be a carnivorous beast nearby. Which
way did the scent—"
Just as Rio was about to ask Latifa for further details, his heightened
sense of hearing picked up on the shrill screeches of a reptilian creature.
"What was that just now...?"
"Is something wrong?"
Seeing Rio's sudden perceptive expression made Latifa tilt her head in
confusion. After about a ten-second pause, Rio located the origin of the
strange sound and looked up at the sky far above them. There was a flight of
eerie, black, bird-like creatures.
They tucked in their wings and swooped down at Rio and Latifa. Once
they reduced their air resistance to the absolute minimum, they closed the
distance between them and Rio in the blink of an eye.
"Is that a bird...?! Latifa, they're coming at us from above!" Rio yelled,
prompting Latifa to draw her dagger from her waist. However, she was
overwhelmingly short on reach for fighting an enemy that could fly in the air.
Furthermore, Latifa was incapable of any magic other than Augendae
Corporis, so she didn't have any other effective means of attack. Thus, she
could only glare at the flying group as they approached. Her small body
trembled just barely.
"It'll be fine. Don't move!" Rio said, manipulating the essence in his
body to form two lumps of ice in his hands. Then, he swung his hands and
hurled the boulder-like blocks of ice at the flight of bird creatures.